


The Devil's Backbone

by juniordreamer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Romantic Angst, modern AU with force bond, rating may change if i'm brave
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-04-26 20:06:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14409636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniordreamer/pseuds/juniordreamer
Summary: Rey is six months away from finishing her parole.  Kylo Ren just killed a man.  They are strangers living on opposite sides of the country and yet, somehow, they can hear and see each other across the miles and miles of land that stretch from New York to New Mexico.  As if the distance between them doesn’t exist.  As if the laws of time and space and gravity have created a loophole specifically for them.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is my submission for Reylo Week 2018! Loosely inspired by the 'red' and 'yellow' day one mini prompts. More fully inspired by The Devil's Backbone by The Civil Wars and the movie In Your Eyes, which features what I like to think of as a modern take on the reylo force bond. Thank you for reading! I'll happily accept any kind of feedback you're inclined to offer.

The first time it happens, Rey is convinced that she has well and truly lost her mind.  That the desert heat, stifling and relentless, has finally driven her past the brink of sanity, as she always knew it one day would.

She’s on the side of the road, her old Mustang angry and spitting as it bakes under the dry New Mexico sun.  The engine is overworked and overheated and she’s doing what she can to ease its rage, pouring a mix of water and coolant—both practically boiling from where they lay stashed in the trunk of the car—into the steaming radiator.

That’s when the sound of the world falls away and her vision doubles and blurs before it shifts back into focus, into a heightened clarity that is unsettlingly sharp—like a beam of light that forgot to cast its shadow.  That’s when she sees _him_.  A man with dark hair and dark eyes and alabaster skin standing at the edge of the road, less than 20 feet from where she is still bent over the hood of her car. 

_Must be an angel._ The thought floats, unbidden, through her mind.  _Or a ghost._

Whatever he is, she knows he can’t be real.  Living men don’t just appear from the nothingness of the desert landscape.  They don’t wear suits of midnight black, the rich fabric somehow unmarred by the dirt and the grit that floats through the air and lays at their feet.  And they don’t look at her—a desert rat from a nowhere town—like she is the last bastion of hope in a world ravaged by war.  Like she is a miracle. 

They stand there for a moment, chests rising and falling in time, and Rey thinks, wildly, that the hazy heat that reflects off the ground is like a mirror.  That maybe the man is really her and she is him—in another universe or another time or maybe even in this life now.  But then the sun shifts just slightly in the sky and he takes a step forward and the blood that drips from his knuckles is thrown into focus, a cruel flash of red in a world of yellow and brown.  The illusion shatters and a cold shiver of fear slices down Rey’s spine, raising goosebumps on her skin despite the heat. 

The man takes another step and Rey closes her eyes.  She starts to count, slow and steady—like this is a game and she’s giving him time to hide.  She counts in time with the pulse of the blood in her veins, breathing through the fear—old and familiar—that has taken hold of her chest. 

She doesn’t open her eyes until she gets to ten and when she does, he is gone.  An angel sent back to heaven.  A ghost turned back to dust.

It should be a relief, to turn and find that she is once again alone on the edge of the cracked and dusty road.  It should be a comfort to no longer be hunted by a dark desert spirit.  But all she feels, as she wipes the sweat from her eyes with grease-marked fingers, is an aching sense of loss.  Like waking up from a dream you’ve already forgotten.  Even when you can still feel the slip of it on your skin and the taste of it on your tongue. 

The sun blazes overhead, causing sweat to bead on her back and a dusty rose to rise on the skin of her shoulders.  Rey feels these things, taking careful stock of each of them in an effort to tether herself back to some semblance of sanity.  Then she slams the hood of the car closed and slides into the front seat, whispering a word of thanks to a faceless god when the engine stutters to life. 

She keeps her eyes on the faded yellow lines that mark the road as she makes her way back to her little corner of the desert, never daring to look behind her to see what ghosts might be following her there.

\- - -

Kylo Ren is unbalanced, teetering just on the edge of sanity.  There’s a dead man at his feet, warm blood running in rivulets across the otherwise pristine marble floor.  There’s blood on his hands too, already sticky and half congealed and Kylo can’t be sure whether it’s his or the dead man’s or some sick mix of the two, but it’s the stench of it—dark and metallic—that’s choking the air from his lungs.  He swallows back the vomit that threatens to rise in his throat and takes deep, steadying breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth. 

It’s an old trick from his childhood—something his mother used to make him do when the panic would settle in his chest and he’d gasp like he was born without lungs, like he never learned to breathe.  He focuses on the rhythm—the steady rising and falling—and it almost works to quell the panic that’s coursing through his veins, but then he looks up and he sees her.  A girl.  Bathed in light, too bright for the shadowed room they are standing in, and looking utterly terrified.   

At first, he feels only relief.  Because even though there are countless things about this day that he doesn’t understand, he is certain that he is standing in a secure space—one room, windowless, soundproofed, and locked from the inside.  So if a girl is there with him, then this must be a dream.  And if it’s a dream, then the blood on the floor isn’t real.  And the man he killed isn’t dead.  And there is still time to go back, to cross over that terrible line in the sand, to erase the blood from his hands, to fix it.  

He breathes fully, deeply, the panic receding from his veins like the pull of the moon on an ocean’s tide.  Then he finds himself stepping toward the girl—this beautiful, miraculous creature that he has somehow dreamed up.  He is enthralled by the damp curls that have fallen loose from the bun piled high on her head.  By the slow drip of the sweat that falls from behind her ear.  By the depth of her green eyes—wide and afraid and _familiar._

She closes those eyes like the slamming of a door and the rejection cuts him to the bone, but it’s not enough to keep him from moving closer, bridging the gap between them with each second that passes.  He is almost to her.  So close he can see the dusting of freckles that cross her nose and her chest.  So close he can smell her in the air—a mix of dirt and sweat and engine grease, so much sweeter than the blood he is tracking across the room.

He walks as a man possessed.  A wolf.  Desperate to touch her, to taste her while he has her in his grasp.  Then he blinks, like the fool that he is, and she is gone. 

The world seems much louder in her absence.  The sounds of the city waft up from the street, too clear, too real.  That’s when Kylo realizes that he hasn’t woken up.  Because he isn’t dreaming. 

Because he is terribly, undoubtedly awake. 

He gives himself the span of a single breath to mourn the loss of the girl, the man he might have been for her, and the life they could have lived—in another timeline or perhaps another universe.  Somewhere far away from this moment and this room and the man he has chosen to be.  Then he pulls a phone from his pocket—prepaid and untraceable—and dials the first of two numbers in the contacts. 

Snoke answers on the first ring and though he doesn’t whisper a single world, Kylo would know the sound of his rasping breath anywhere. 

“It’s done,” Kylo declares into the void, an answer to an unspoken question. 

Snoke laughs, soft and cruel and the sound of it sends a chill down Kylo’s spine.  “Excellent,” he purrs.  “Call Hux for clean-up and report to headquarters when you’re through.  Tonight, we celebrate.”

\- - -

Rey doesn’t breathe a full breath until the weathered gates of Niima Outpost cut a line through the horizon.  And even then, her lungs don’t fill easily until she pulls up to her trailer, settled in the back of the community amongst the dirt and the few tiny shrubs that manage to peek through the cracks in the earth.  Everything is as she left it—the metal hull of the airstream, the makeshift deck made from mismatched pieces of scrap wood, the dirt-stained wooden planters lining the perimeter of the property and filled with succulents—each one a different color, each row a different kind. 

The reliability of these small treasures help to calm her nerves and settle her spirit, but she still feels a tug—persistent and strange—at the back of her mind.  As if she’s been tethered to that place in the road and to the man who stood there.  But Rey doesn’t have the patience for dwelling on such things.  Not when there is work to be done.  So she shakes her head and pulls the hair from her face, deftly tying it back in a knot at the base of her neck, and wills herself to focus.  To forget. 

She tends to the garden first, carefully plucking the more mature plants from their home in the wooden planters and transferring them to individual pots, ready to be sold to tourists passing through the Outpost on their way to grander sights—the Grand Canyon, usually.  Sometimes White Sands.  She sifts through the soil with bare hands, letting the dirt and the grit bore its way under her nails, staining her skin a ruddy brown.  It’s a routine she’s long since memorized, but she can’t help the little rush of pride she feels each time she plucks a plant from the soil, carefully minding the roots, and finds that it has managed to survive—to _flourish_ —with hardly anything at all.  Some sun, some shade, a bit of water.  A strange, lucky miracle.

The desert sun is low in the sky by the time she finishes with her chores, sending streaks of pink and purple across the rocky formations that are already bathed in shadow.  Rey takes a moment to be grateful for the darkening sky, for the dusty air in her lungs, for the wide expanse of open land that surrounds her—so different from the crowded cell and the tiny bunk and the clanking metal bars she sometimes still hears in the quietest of desert nights.  She takes a moment to be grateful for freedom—or something like it.  Then she dusts her hands off on the side of her faded jeans and grabs a pocketful of kibble from a container stashed under the deck before setting off on the dusty trail that winds through the extent of the property.

The Outpost is quiet this time of night.  The vendors have long since packed up their treasures, storing them in trunks and in trailers for another day and another crowd of wandering visitors.  She scans the horizon for BB-8, the golden shepherd that controls the market’s population of desert mice in exchange for fresh water and warm beds provided by the kindest of Niima’s tenants—namely, Rey—but he is nowhere to be found.

“BB-8!” she calls down the trail, now bathed in a dusky grey that makes it nearly impossible to tell the rocks from the shadows. 

She waits for the soft shuffling of paws on flattened dirt, but it doesn’t come.  There is only the soft whistle of the wind in her ears and the low rumble of a truck’s engine drifting down from a road she can’t see.  She’s just about to turn back, certain that BB-8 will find his way home when he’s ready, when she feels it—the tug on her soul.  The sudden dampening of sound.  And then, footsteps echoing down the darkened path, too wide and too heavy for a dog, for _any_ animal that stalks the grounds of the Outpost.  

Rey turns, eyes narrowed in the darkness, and finds him less than an arms width away.  The angel.  The ghost.  The man with dark eyes and dark hair that falls in soft waves to his shoulders.  She loses the breath in her lungs to the shock of it, her body frozen in place by some invisible force. 

This time, his hands are clean.  But still, there’s the fear—sharp and cruel—boring its way through her skull.  Adrenaline roars in Rey’s veins and suddenly she is ready to run, to scream, to fight for her life the way she has had to fight for it so many times before.  But before she can move, before she can do _any_ of it, he does something that shakes her to her core.

He steps back and he speaks, his words a low whisper against her skin in the night. 

“Are you real?”


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo thinks he might be losing his mind. What other explanation could there be for the girl that has somehow appeared across from him in the bathroom of Snoke’s favorite club? The same girl from before—the one from the dream that wasn’t a dream. He’d blame it on the alcohol, but the truth is he is stone cold sober, his whiskey left untouched and sweating back at the table in the lounge. 
> 
> She has changed in the handful of hours that have passed since she last appeared to him, but only in small ways. Her hair is tied in a low bun at the base of her neck and her clothes and her hands are stained a dark, rusty color that is much too like the dried blood he scraped from his own skin just hours ago. But the look in her eyes is the same—wild and afraid and focused, like she is ready to face whatever darkness is to come. Like she has faced that darkness before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to read, comment, and kudos the first chapter of this little story! The feedback truly means the world to me. Hope you enjoy chapter 2!

Kylo thinks he might be losing his mind.  What other explanation could there be for the girl that has somehow appeared across from him in the bathroom of Snoke’s favorite club?  The same girl from before—the one from the dream that wasn’t a dream.  He’d blame it on the alcohol, but the truth is he is stone cold sober, his whiskey left untouched and sweating back at the table in the lounge. 

She has changed in the handful of hours that have passed since she last appeared to him, but only in small ways.  Her hair is tied in a low bun at the base of her neck and her clothes and her hands are stained a dark, rusty color that is much too like the dried blood he scraped from his own skin just hours ago.  But the look in her eyes is the same—wild and afraid and _focused_ , like she is ready to face whatever darkness is to come.  Like she has faced that darkness before.   

Kylo blinks—once, twice, three times, waiting for her to disappear.  But every time he opens his eyes, she is there—as solid and as clear as the black metal stalls beside him. 

He knows he should turn and go back to his fellow First Order members.  He should forget the girl and try to salvage what is left of his sanity.  But he can’t ignore the burning curiosity he feels when he looks at her, the strange need to _understand_ what this is.  Because he doesn’t feel crazy.  And if it isn’t a dream and it isn’t a hallucination, it must be something else. 

Kylo steps back, drawing courage from the added distance between them, and he whispers the only question he can think to ask into the silence.  “Are you real?”

The girl hesitates, eyebrows drawn tightly together like he’s given her a riddle that she isn’t sure how to solve.  Then she steps toward him, into the space he gave away, and she offers her answer.  “Are you?”

Her voice is strong and lilting and he swears he can almost see the waves of reverberation that travel from her throat and through the air to settle in his ears and he is so stunned by it he almost forgets to consider the meaning of her words.  But then the earth seems to shift under his feet and his vision is split into two and suddenly he is no longer standing just in the bathroom of a club in the heart of New York City, but he is also somehow in the middle of a desert in a part of the country he’s never seen. 

The two realities sway and shift in front of him and if he focuses he can clearly see the one that must belong to her—miles of open land, hard packed dirt under his feet, trucks rumbling in the distance.  Then he adjusts his gaze and the dark walls of the club’s bathroom reappear and he can feel the cool, hard edge of the metal sink at his back and the vibration from the thumping drone of music that drifts in from outside the door.  The girl is there through it all—steadfast on the dirt and on the tile.  A constant in the chaos.   

She has her arms outstretched, like a bird about to take flight, and her lips are parted in wonder and Kylo can only assume that she is experiencing the same shift in perspective that has thrown him so thoroughly off balance.  Her chest rises and falls erratically and Kylo swears he can almost hear the pattern of her heart, beating in a rhythm much like his own—fast and panicked.

“Where are you?” her voice cuts through the noise in his head, clear and demanding.  Her eyes fall on the tiled floor, the black stalls, the mirror that runs the length of the room.

“New York,” he answers after a beat.  “Where are you?”

She looks around and he guesses that she is now taking in her own surroundings.  “New Mexico.”

Kylo runs a nervous hand through his hair at this stunning piece of information.  “Fuck,” he whispers, almost to himself.  And then, more clearly, to her— “Is this really happening?”

The girl shakes her head, her hands clenched in tight fists by her side.  “You tell me.”

The bathroom door swings open before Kylo can respond and with it comes a blast of music and loud voices, making them both jump.

Kylo turns and finds Poe Dameron leaning casually against the open door, his kind eyes cautious and staring.

“Hey,” he says, gesturing vaguely to the First Order’s usual row of tables at the back of the lounge.  “Snoke sent me to check on you.”

He pays no mind to the girl in the room and Kylo knows then what he had already suspected to be true—that she is a vision meant only for him.  He steals a glance behind him and finds that the girl is still there.  But he can feel her slipping away, the edges of her world blurring and fading in exchange for a more solid grasp of his own.  He feels the panic creeping into his chest as she bleeds away into the darkened walls.  With it comes the anger—old and familiar.  At having been interrupted.  At watching her disappear again.  He wants to reach for her, pull her back to his side of the world, examine her fully and up close until he understands what she is. 

But Poe is standing there, lines of concern marking his tanned face and there, just beneath the surface, Kylo sees it—a sliver of suspicion, a fraction of doubt.  The inevitability of it hits him then.  That he has no true choice in this.  That he must play the part he has readily accepted and be the man he was always fated to be.

He allows himself to take one last look at her, now just a shimmer against a blackened wall, and then he carefully arranges the features of his face into the mask he is expected to wear in the presence of his First Order brothers.  The mask that is Kylo Ren. 

It almost works.  But it seems the events of this seemingly endless day have caused new cracks to form and Dameron, who is the closest thing he has to a friend, sees right through them. 

“Hux told me about the job.  Said things got a little rough.” 

Kylo thinks of the blood, dark and thick.  How it stained the white ceramic of the tub until Hux had doused it with bleach.  And then he thinks of the girl, the dirt on her hands and the look in her eyes and there it is—another crack, jagged and raw.

“Come on, Dameron,” he finds himself saying as he pushes past the man and reenters the world he once thought he knew.  “You’re buying me a drink.”

It almost sounds normal. 

\- - -

When Rey was a child, she would dream of a voice.  Sometimes it was a roaring scream and sometimes it was the softest of sighs, like the wind took the shape of a person and bent low to whisper in her ear.  Sometimes it was kind and sometimes it was cruel, the jagged edge of it coming down to tear slices from her skin.  Sometimes it was a child and sometimes it was a spirit that had long since left this world behind for the heavens, the skeleton of its broken body left scattered and bleached on the sun-scorched earth.   

It spoke to her of many things she didn’t understand and some things she did.  Of power and darkness, legacy and seduction, loyalty and betrayal.  It spoke to her of stories from long ago and of things yet to come.

It was at once a terror and a comfort and, as the years passed, she began to think of the voice as a friend.  A faithful companion that called to her only in the night, when the chill of a desert wind crept under the door and stole to her veins like the venom of a coral snake—cool and paralyzing. 

She had long since abandoned the childish fantasies she had once believed to be true—that perhaps the voice belonged to her parents.  That maybe they had been stolen away by a punishing king who forbade them from coming to find her.  That they waited until their captor drifted to sleep to whisper their messages across the ether, their words becoming scrambled in the eons that separated them from her. 

They were fantasies that she gave away to the desert sun in exchange for the truth—that the voice was only a dream, an amalgamation of conscious lies and subconscious truths—of stories she once was told, places she longed to see, words she wished to hear.   

But when the night before her split open like a star, the edges of it falling away to reveal the man from the road, she realized another truth.  It came after his world of hard metal and clean lines faded away and she was left to walk the darkened trail back to her trailer, to the only true home she had ever known.  It was there in the questions that stretched through the impossible distance between them, echoing now in her mind. 

_“Are you real?”_ he had asked. _“Is this really happening?”_

The cold truth—whispered to her through the sudden quiet of the night—was that she knew his voice—the powerful cadence, the low timber.  She knew it like she knew her own. 

It had called to her in a lifetime of dreams. 

\- - -

Hours have passed, the club and his brothers long since left behind in exchange for the echoing quiet of his Tribeca apartment, and still Kylo can’t shake her from his mind—the girl from the desert.  He closes his eyes and he can almost feel the warmth that lapped at his skin when he spoke to her and reality shifted in a way that shouldn’t be possible, transporting him to the plains of New Mexico though his feet stayed rooted to the ground in New York. 

He paces the length of the penthouse, blackened boots leaving tracks on the polished hardwood floor, and replays the events of the day in his mind. 

It had started with the man—Canady.  A body with a gun they had hired—and promptly fired—for a couple of small operations—ATM scams and petty theft—a few years back.  Word had come through the line that Canady was being targeted as a potential informant for the FBI and, well, Snoke couldn’t stand for that. 

The job usually fell to shadowy figures at the edge of Order membership.  Men without names and without titles who took their money and didn’t ask questions.  But this time, Snoke made sure it fell to Kylo. 

“ _Consider it a test of loyalty_ ,” he had said.  “ _And of strength.  You can’t be in this business without getting a little blood on your hands.  A lesson your grandfather would have been eager to teach you.”_

Canady was a criminal.  On the books for possession and trafficking, battery and sexual assault and at least half a dozen other sordid charges and would it really be so terrible if he was permanently scrubbed from the earth?  If it protected the Order?  If it secured the continuation of his grandfather’s legacy?  These were the questions Kylo asked himself as he met the man in the secure space and did what he had been told to do.

He hadn’t expected the blood to shine quite so bright in the dim of the room and he hadn’t expected to look up and see _her_ peering through his soul.  But that’s what had happened and now he can’t think, he can’t _breathe_ without seeing her in the back of his mind. 

It isn’t until later, when there are dark shadows carved under his eyes and the light of a new day peeks out from behind the moon, that he stops to consider what she saw the first time they appeared to one another.  The sweat on his brow?  The blood on his hands? 

The body on the floor?


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moon has long since taken its place in the sky by the time Rey pulls back up to her trailer. She makes it as far as the wooden deck before she collapses sideways into an old patio chair. The hard plastic digs into her back and thighs, but she doesn’t have the energy to move and anyway, she has a nice view of the stars from this position. They blink down at her like a thousand fairy lights from their place in the past and Rey wonders what all they’ve seen in their lifetime. Did they shine down on the dinosaurs? On the earth when it was new and clean and lonely? Or did they exist before everything else? A sprinkle of light in an ocean of darkness. 
> 
> A pack of cayotes howl in the distance, high pitched yips and whining whimpers that echo through the darkness and raise the hair on the back of Rey’s neck though she knows they are too far away to pose any real threat. Then something about the sound changes, like the static that fades in and out when you drive outside the range of a radio tower, and Rey knows without looking that he has found her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you to everyone who has read, commented, and left kudos for this story. I am so honored by all of the lovely feedback I have received so far. This update is all Rey, but we'll get back to Kylo's perspective in the next one! I'm also hoping to update at least once every two weeks. Thank you again for reading, I hope you all enjoy this look into Rey's life on the Outpost!

Morning dawns on the Outpost and with it comes the sun, casting streaks of orange and purple light that pull at the shadows leftover from the moon until the land is wiped clean of them.  Nocturnal creatures take to their burrows to escape the coming heat and a soft wind blows in to stir the dust that settled in the stillness of the night. 

Rey watches the transition from the open window of her airstream, drawing warmth from the ball of fluff and fur tucked into her side.  She breathes and sees that everything is as it should be, as it always has been.  And yet, there is no mistaking that something fundamental has changed.  She feels it like a weight at the back of her mind.  Something primitive, instinctual _._ A pulse.  A _force_.  Like she could close her eyes and continue to live in this moment, in this place—with BB-8’s weight on her legs and the scrape of the desert’s dust in her lungs.  Like she could open them and find herself in another world entirely—one of clean lines and dark colors.  A world that belongs to the man—to the stranger she thinks she knows.

It shouldn’t be possible—the way he had appeared to her, the way his voice had danced through her dreams for as long as she could remember.  All of it.  None of it.  But in the light of a new day, she understands that what is or isn’t possible doesn’t change what is true.  And the truth is that he had stood in her desert and she had stood in his bar.  The truth is that they are somehow— _impossibly_ —connected.  

She searches for the fear, the cold slice she felt so surely when he first appeared on the road and again on the trail, but it doesn’t come.  Instead, there is a strange sense of relief.  Balance, even.  Like the acceptance has shifted a weight she didn’t realize she had been carrying until it lifted, leaving her strong and tired and brave. 

The old analog clock propped against the side of the airstream’s tiny kitchenette ticks toward 6:15, prompting Rey to pull herself away from the window and toward the first of the day’s many tasks.  She starts with clothes, dragging on a decently clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt that is only slightly wrinkled from where it lay abandoned on the corner of the trailer’s single bed.  A quick glance in the mirror reveals dark shadows underneath her eyes and a tangled mess of chestnut hair framing her face, the remnants of a sleepless night.  Rey swipes at the shadows once, quickly accepts that there is nothing to be done for them, and wrangles her hair into a bun piled high on her head. 

Once fully dressed and somewhat presentable, Rey steps from the trailer and out into the day.  BB-8 is fast on her heels, bounding down the steps to take a quick lick of water before running down the trail to the stalls of the Outpost to greet the first of Niima’s visitors.  It’s all part of their usual routine and Rey can’t help but to wonder, as she loads the trunk of her car with newly potted succulents, where the man from the road is now, what he might be doing—and when she’ll see him again. 

\- - -

Two miles separate the heart of Niima Outpost from Rey’s home at the back of the property—two miles of loose gravel and ruddy dust that cause her Mustang to slip and slide across the earth if she dares push the engine past a leisurely fifteen miles per hour.  She could drive the beaten trail with her eyes closed—and sometimes, when the day’s work leaves her tired in a way that settles deep down into her bones, she thinks she nearly does.  That old ache hasn’t found her yet today, despite the sleepless night, and so she presses the toe of her boot down on the accelerator, taking a thrill of delight from the way the engine roars beneath her as the speedometer ticks up toward twenty and then twenty-five. 

She makes it to the stalls of the Outpost in record time and finds it much the same as it always is—a buzzing horde of worker bees come to harvest the land for their portion of honey.  The Outpost has been a Jakku landmark for nearly a hundred years—a place where deals are made and trades are brokered and money is passed from hand to hand in exchange for handknit quilts, painted New Mexican landscapes, Apache drums, farm grown fruits and vegetables, and any other number of treasures likely to turn a profit.  It isn’t steady work by any means and there are days when the last of the patrons head to their cars with full wallets and empty hands and a cloud looms over the stalls of the Outpost as the vendors pack up what they weren’t lucky enough to sell.  Those days are hard—and more frequent now than they’ve been in years past—but they always come back when the new day dawns, determined to work harder, to start anew. 

Rey knows that drive, understands that it is borne from a push for survival.  She recognizes it in the way that she carefully arranges the plants in her booth—sometimes by type and sometimes by size and sometimes in a pattern that is hardly a pattern at all, dictated only by a feeling, by some instinct she’s hardly even aware of.  It’s in the way she waits for the last lingering customer to leave her booth before she rushes out the gates to start her night serving drinks at the Cantina.  It’s in the way she dutifully complies with the conditions of her parole—weekly check-ins with her parole officer, never crossing state lines, keeping her job and her home.  It’s doing what it takes—to keep your head above water, to survive.    

The morning crowd passes through the Outpost like a sandstorm of curious eyes and eager hands and by the time the dust settles back down, only a handful of succulents are left in Rey’s booth—tiny little sprouts, easily overlooked though Rey knows they will soon flourish into full blooms with proper care.  She thinks it’s the colors that draw the customers in—the muted greens and earthy blues offering a sharp contrast from the constant reds and browns that mark the land in Jakku.  She rearranges what is left of her inventory and takes a moment to breathe in the energy around her, buzzing with gratitude for the morning’s generosity. 

“Good crowd today!”

Rey turns and finds Maz three booths down from her own, circular spectacles a bit skewed on her face and magnifying her eyes to three times their actual size.  The older woman is surrounded by a group of men that have gathered in front of her stall to peer through her collection of homemade moonshine.  They are young, clean shaven, and strong—all the markings of off duty military men—and Rey wonders idly if they’ve come down from the missile range where Finn, her foster brother, is stationed just a few hours north of Jakku. 

“Did you warn them about the apple pie?” she calls down to Maz with a grin.

The older woman waves a tiny, wrinkled hand.  “I put it on the label, it’s up to them to read it.”

Rey laughs and shakes her head at this, knowing that Maz’s idea of a warning is a handwritten note scrawled across the front of each mason jar: _strong as god and sweet as sin_.  Rey’s never touched the stuff herself, but she vividly remembers its effect on Finn back when they were nothing but a couple of gangly teenagers tearing through the grounds of the Outpost in the middle of many restless summer nights.  She’s also smelled it on the breath of men in the Cantina—some rowdy and some leering, but all loose with their money and unsteady on their feet.  

“You working the bar tonight?”

Rey nods.  “I’ll be there.”

“Good.  You’ll be training the new girl I hired—Rose, I think her name is.” 

Maz motions toward a fleshy man making his way through the stalls, the skin of his face sallow and sagging down into this neck.  “Incoming,” she warns.

Rey swallows down the sigh that threatens to fall from her lips when she spots the approach of her former foster father and the current owner of Niima Outpost. 

“Rey,” he says, half grumble, half growl, and his version of a greeting.

She nods in his direction.  “Unkar.”

Plutt palms a plant in his hand, paying no mind to the dirt that spills from the top of the pot, making a mess of what had been a relatively clean work space only moments before.  “How’s business?”

Rey keeps her eyes on the register, studiously sorting through a handful of coins in an effort to steady her hands.  “About the same as last week,” she supplies.

“Good.”  Plutt drops the pot back on the table with a thud and Rey understands that the pleasantries are now over.  “You should know I’ll be taking a larger cut this month.  Seventy percent.”

The coins spill from Rey’s hands as she finally turns to face him.  The anger that buzzes in her veins is sudden and overpowering and, strangely, not entirely her own.  She senses that wherever the man from the road is now, he is angry too—furious in a wild, untamed way that Rey has never had the luxury of being.  The feeling is wholly disorienting and for a moment Rey forgets the source of her own fury—hardly a peal of thunder in the storm that rages in the soul she now knows exists on the other end of a string.

But then Plutt coughs—a wet, wracking thing that rattles in his chest and reeks of nicotine and Rey lets go of the rage that doesn’t belong to her and focuses on the one that does.

“That’s twenty more than last month.  And thirty more than you charge the other vendors,” she says, forcing her voice to be steady.

“The other vendors don’t live on my property.  It’s still a fair price, considering.”

Rey’s brows pull together.  “Considering what, Unkar?”

He laughs and what was a raging fire in her veins is now an icy storm.  “Considering your _debt_ , girlie.  Or did you forget who covered the cost of your fines?”

Rey’s stomach turns at his words.  “You said that was a gift.  That family sticks by family.”

Rey hears the words as they leave her lips, furious with herself for thinking he had meant them then, for how thick they feel in her throat now.

Plutt shrugs, the movement sending ripples down his body.  “Yeah well, people aren’t buying as much as they used to around here.  And _other_ business ain’t doing too good either.”

Rey understands what he means by this, hears the hidden accusation in his words, but she says nothing in return.  Silence spreads between them, heavy and tense.  Plutt is the one to break it.  

“Look, I can take seventy percent of what you make here each month or you can give it to me up front.”

He says it like he’s offering her a kindness, like the choice should sooth the sting of the betrayal.  But her sentence had come down with a vengeance—two years in prison and nearly ten thousand dollars in fines for the charge of armed robbery.  More money than Rey had ever seen in her life, more than she would ever hope to see.  So no, the choice Plutt offered her wasn’t really a choice at all.  It was a threat.

So Rey does the only thing she can.  She swallows down the tears that burn in her chest and nods once, ever the dutiful daughter.  “Seventy percent is fine.” 

Plutt plops a large, fleshy hand on Rey’s shoulder and it takes every ounce of will she possesses not to shake it off like it’s a black-tailed rattlesnake come to wrap around her neck.  “That’s my girl.”

\- - -

The moon has long since taken its place in the sky by the time Rey pulls back up to her trailer.  She makes it as far as the wooden deck before she collapses sideways into an old patio chair.  The hard plastic digs into her back and thighs, but she doesn’t have the energy to move and anyway, she has a nice view of the stars from this position.  They blink down at her like a thousand fairy lights from their place in the past and Rey wonders what all they’ve seen in their lifetime.  Did they shine down on the dinosaurs?  On the earth when it was new and clean and lonely?  Or did they exist before everything else?  A sprinkle of light in an ocean of darkness. 

She tries not to think of her foster father and the fines and the extra shifts she’ll have to take at the Cantina to make up for the money she now owes to him—shifts Maz has thankfully already agreed to let her work.  They are troubles that belong to the day and now, bathed in the light of the stars, she is only a child of the night. 

A pack of cayotes howl in the distance, high pitched yips and whining whimpers that echo through the darkness and raise the hair on the back of Rey’s neck though she knows they are too far away to pose any real threat.  Then something about the sound changes, like the static that fades in and out when you drive outside the range of a radio tower, and Rey knows without looking that he has found her again. 

“You’re back,” he says and his voice is so low it’s barely a voice at all—just a vibration drifting slowly through the air.

Rey turns to sit upright in the chair, whispering a silent goodbye to the stars as she does.  “So are you.”

If she focuses just right, she can see his world—the exposed brick wall and the ceiling that stretches to the heavens and the dark leather couch that looks more expensive than everything Rey has ever owned.  She sees him too—fully this time, no longer distracted by fear or panic.  She sees that even sitting, he is tall.  And broad, the muscles of his arms stretching across the sleeves of his navy t-shirt.  She recognizes the eyes from before—dark and now marked by shadows much like her own.  The rest of his face is a strange collection of features that are at once sharp and soft, harsh and delicate—all long nose and strong brow and wide, soft lips.  _Beautiful,_ she thinks.

He is staring at her like he doesn’t quite believe she’s real.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d—if this would happen again.”

He runs a nervous hand through his hair and Rey sees that it is damp at the edges. 

“I wasn’t either,” she admits.

“What do you think this is?” he asks and Rey can tell from the way he tenses his jaw and clenches his fist that he isn’t used to not knowing, to not understanding.

She shakes her head slightly.  “I don’t know.”

He leans forward, bracing a hand on one of his knees.  “Why do you think it’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Rey says again and if it comes out harsher than she intends it’s only because she isn’t good at this—sharing so much with someone she knows so little.  Or maybe just at talking in general.  But if he is disappointed by her lack of answers or hurt by her tone, he doesn’t show it.  His face stays neutral and calm—a perfect mask. 

“I think I felt you earlier,” she offers after a beat. 

She expects him to be surprised by this, to ask her more questions, but he only nods.  “I think I felt you too.  You felt…angry.”

“Yes,” Rey whispers.  “So did you.”

For a moment, the mask slips and he looks ashamed and much younger than he is, like a child pretending to be a man.  Then a cayote howls at the moon and he clears his throat and just like that, the mask falls back into place.  “Yeah,” he says gruffly.  “Just…work stuff.”  

It’s an answer to a question she never asked and it sounds like a lie, but Rey doesn’t mind.  She knows what it’s like to have secrets, that some things are too dark or too hard or too special to share. 

He tilts his head back and a sigh falls from his lips as he takes in her view of the world. 

“It’s beautiful there,” he says, almost a whisper.  “We don’t have stars like this in the city.”

Rey looks up at the sky and this time, the stars shine down on them both.  “They’re up there, you just can’t see them.”

He hums in agreement and then they each fall silent, two souls under the stars with half a world and no distance at all between them.  Rey can’t be sure how much time passes—maybe years or maybe no time at all, but when she finally tears her eyes from the sky to see if he’s still there, she finds him already staring back at her. 

She can see the edge of the sun starting to peak through the sky on his side of the world and for a moment he is trapped between the light and the dark—a shadow come to life.  She isn’t sure how she knows, but suddenly she is sure that their time together is coming to an end and he must feel it too because he leans forward, closer than before, and when he speaks his words are fast, almost panicked.

“I don’t know your name.”

She feels afraid for the first time since she turned and found him on the trail.  But it’s a different kind of fear—one that pulls at the beat of the heart in her chest and sets the blood in her veins on fire.  It’s a fear like standing on the edge of a cliff and knowing you have only two options.  You can turn and go back the way that you came.  Or you can go forward and discover something new. 

Somehow, he is even closer than before.  So close she could count the freckles on his face, even in the dark, even from two thousand miles away.  From up close, she sees that the mask has slipped again and underneath it she finds the face of a man who feels the same fear she does.  A man standing on the edge of a cliff. 

She decides to be brave.

“I’m Rey.”

He decides to jump.

“I’m Ben.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been too long since Kylo has gotten any real sleep. The evidence is written in the dark circles carved beneath his eyes, the heaviness to his limbs, the slight shake in his hands as he brings yet another cup of coffee to his lips. It’s dark and strong and pulls at the blood in his veins until his heart thumps wildly in his chest, but does little to ease the exhaustion that has settled deep in his bones. 
> 
> He had spent the night with the girl, with Rey, and now he can’t get her out of his head. Her name echoes in his mind as he walks through Washington Market, beating in time with the pound of his legs against the asphalt, still damp with morning dew. It whispers up from the crust of the earth as he crosses over a subway grate and the rush of warm air is so much like her desert heat that he stops and turns, expecting to find her on the street beside him. But he is alone among a thousand strangers, all rushing toward the promise of another day. 
> 
> It repeats over and over again in his head, like a song or a prayer, and beneath it is the shadow of another name, a dead boy’s name, his name. Ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise update! Enjoy!

It’s been too long since Kylo has gotten any real sleep.  The evidence is written in the dark circles carved beneath his eyes, the heaviness to his limbs, the slight shake in his hands as he brings yet another cup of coffee to his lips.  It’s dark and strong and pulls at the blood in his veins until his heart thumps wildly in his chest, but does little to ease the exhaustion that has settled deep in his bones.

He had spent the night with the girl, with _Rey_ , and now he can’t get her out of his head.  Her name echoes in his mind as he walks through Washington Market, beating in time with the pound of his legs against the asphalt, still damp with morning dew.  It whispers up from the crust of the earth as he crosses over a subway grate and the rush of warm air is so much like her desert heat that he stops and turns, expecting to find her on the street beside him.  But he is alone among a thousand strangers, all rushing toward the promise of another day. 

It repeats over and over again in his head, like a song or a prayer, and beneath it is the shadow of another name, a dead boy’s name, _his_ name.  _Ben._

It’s a name he hasn’t spoken aloud in years, a name that belongs to before.  Before Snoke, before the First Order, before the blood and the violence.  But he had whispered it across a thousand miles to a girl who looked as tired as he felt and in the fraction of a second it took to fall from his lips, it had stuttered to life again in the now.  With Rey. 

It’s dangerous.  The exhaustion he feels, the girl in his head—all of it.  It makes him feel heavy and slow when he needs to be sharp and focused and though the day is still young and the air has not yet warmed to the full extent of the early August sun, sweat has begun to gather at his brow and on his back.  He feels like he’s moving through water, the depth of the pressure pushing on his lungs until he can barely breathe and he has to duck into an alley three blocks from Order headquarters to steel his spine against the dirty brick. 

He tilts his head toward what little can be seen of the sky from the middle of the sprawling city and tries not to think—about Rey or Canady or the blood he swears he still feels on his hands.  He empties his mind of everything but the most basic of instincts—shallow breaths and pulsing blood—until the world no longer sways under his feet.  He disappears into himself, into Kylo Ren.  And then, with his fists clenched tightly by his side, he disappears back into the crowd. 

\- - -

The usual sounds of the city fall away when Kylo turns onto the forgotten side street in Lower Manhattan that houses the First Order headquarters.  It’s nothing but an old warehouse, the unassuming exterior faded and flanked on either side by two similarly unremarkable structures that lay gutted and long since abandoned. 

Kylo enters through the open industrial cage that serves as the front door, his footsteps echoing off the concrete floor and exposed steel beams that mark the space.  A fleet of delivery trucks and vans with darkened windows and peeling paint sit parked on the lower level—an easy front for much of the FO’s actual business.  Kylo passes them with hardly a glance as he climbs the worn stairs to the row of offices lining the space on the second floor. 

Snoke’s office is tucked into the back corner, the only one with a view of the quiet street below.  A pair of guards stand watch outside the door, backs straight and eyes forward.  One of them nods briefly in Kylo’s direction as they watch him approach and both their hands stay idly by their side as he enters into the room without knocking.  After all, this is a standing appointment—his presence is expected. 

“Ren,” Snoke growls from behind a sprawling steel desk.  “Close the door behind you.” 

Kylo does as he is told before crossing more fully into the office.  There are chairs—two of them, hard steel and intentionally uncomfortable, but Kylo prefers to stand for these meetings.  So he does—spine steeled and head bowed, a dutiful servant under the rule of an indifferent master. 

Snoke continues peering through a stack of files at a pace that is all slovenly, luxurious power.  It’s a game he likes to play—letting the silence fill a room like a tangible thing, pressing down on the weak minded and the soft willed until their palms sweat and their hearts pound and they let their words flow freely in a desperate bid to break the dreadful quiet.  There’s no need for interrogation, for questions of loyalty when instead he can simply wait for the mind to crack, the truth dripping like syrup from what is left of the shell. 

When he was young and weak and reckless, Kylo often lost the game.  The silence would stretch until it roared in his ears and he would confess to being afraid, to missing his parents, to every weakness and every crime he had ever committed, that he ever _would_ commit. 

But in the years that passed, Kylo learned to sink into himself, to fortify his mind.  He learned patience and caution until he no longer feared the silence, until he was content to stay in it for as long as it took to prove he was no longer the reckless child Snoke expected him to be.  

Time passes, marked only by the slow shifting of shadows on the floor, and Kylo waits until finally, Snoke sets the files aside.  It is only then that Kylo looks up and he finds Snoke staring back at him, his icy blue eyes sharp and unwavering.

“I trust you’re prepared for tonight’s shipment.”

Kylo nods.  “Yes.  Dameron and I will be there.”

Snoke rests the tips of his fingers against one another, pale and almost alien in their length.  “Excellent.  Bring the crates here when you’re through and prepare them for distribution.  We have buyers coming tomorrow.”

Kylo nods and turns to leave, but Snoke speaks again.

“You should know,” he begins, his voice low and measured, “another agent has taken over the investigation into our dealings here.”

The news isn’t entirely surprising.  The FBI has had an open investigation into the First Order for as long as Kylo can remember.  A change in command happens every few years, when the informants disappear and the trails run cold.  But there’s a look in Snoke’s eyes—a sharpness, a warning, a threat that Kylo doesn’t understand until he speaks again. 

“It’s Leia Organa.”

Another dead name from another life, from _before—_ when he was still Ben and he still had a mother to miss.  The revelation hits him in the chest with a physical force that threatens to overpower him if he isn’t careful, if he isn’t strong. 

When he speaks, his voice is steady, his words practical and he breathes a silent sigh of relief that the mask he wears has not yet shattered.  “Do they know about Canady?”

Snoke watches him carefully, reaching into his soul with unblinking eyes before answering.  “No one has reported him missing yet, but they undoubtedly have their suspicions.”

Kylo feels his left eye twitch and curses inwardly as Snoke’s face splits into a grim smile at the tiny crack. 

“Not to worry, my child.  You know the rule—no body, no crime.  Hux may be a rabid cur, but he can clear a scene with the best of them.  Canady’s ashes are scattered in four water systems.  And anyway, that’s not my concern.”

There’s the silence again, the torturous pause before he continues.  “I expect Organa to attempt to make contact with you.”

The anger that strikes Kylo’s veins comes hot and fast and he has to work to control it.  “You doubt my loyalties?”

“I understand the draw of family,” Snoke corrects.  “It’s a temptation even the strongest among us find difficult to deny.”

“She means nothing to me.”  The words slip easily from his tongue though they taste like a lie. 

Snoke considers this, tilting his head to examine him fully.

“We shall see.”

\- - -

It is late and the world is quiet save for the occasional blast of sound from the street below—angry car horns and squealing tires, thumping bass and drunken words shouted across darkened streets.  The city’s soundtrack in the dead of night. 

Kylo lays across his bed, drunk with exhaustion.  He feels as if he has come unstuck from time itself—a nameless, tortured god that lives lifetimes in the span of a single tick of the clock, that dies with the exhale of every breath. 

The drop had gone as planned—there were few suppliers in the country who would dare to scam Victor Snoke.  And so when Kylo checked the wooden crates, he saw what he had expected to find—layers of guns and ammunition, black and sleek and ready to be sold to dealers around the city. 

Money was exchanged from hand to hand and the weapons were loaded into one of the FO’s decoy delivery trucks.  He and Poe had spent the rest of the night sifting through each weapon, checking for missed serial numbers and ensuring their functionality—a robotic, tedious process that left his eyes tired and his muscles aching. 

He waits for sleep now, searches for it in desperation, but his mind is a restless engine careening down the tracks, wild and untamed.  He sees flashes of his life, things he thought he had forgotten—flying through the air in his father’s two-seater plane, half thrilled and half terrified as they crossed over acres of farmland in upstate New York.  He remembers waking from nightmares he didn’t understand, sweat soaked and trembling and afraid to leave his bed.  He sees himself as a young man, his features twisted up in a rage that seemed to bleed from him, casting everything he touched in streaks of shining scarlet. 

But mostly, he sees his mother.  In his memories, her face is soft and her hair is long and flowing.  When he was a child, he would watch her unwind it from the bun at the back of her neck, a waterfall of waves not unlike his own, and he would think that she was a princess.

He remembers how her eyes were kind and how they changed as he did.  They grew cautious, shielded, afraid, and then determined as she cast him out in a betrayal that pushed him toward Snoke, a betrayal that had changed everything. 

He tells himself now with cruel candor that she will betray him again.  That she has made it her duty to bring his life crashing down around him.  The truth of it cuts down to the bone, but he welcomes the pain.  Anything to distract him from the flood of memories he can’t seem to stem. 

Kylo rises from his bed and begins to pace around the room.  He thinks of Rey and the weakness he showed when he offered her his given name.  It’s a weakness he can’t afford to show again and he decides then that if he sees the girl again, if he sees Rey, he will tell her the truth.  That Ben Solo is a ghost, that he is only Kylo Ren. 

But then the earth shifts and when he looks up, she is there and the relief she offers is so instant that the words die on his lips. 

For a moment, all he can do is stare, basking in the sudden peace that has fallen on his mind.  She is sitting on her bed, her back resting against the side of her trailer.  Her hair falls in waves across her shoulders, shorter than he expected it to be, but beautiful.  Her legs are deliciously bare and he is entranced by the way she has them balanced on the edge of the bed, carefully curled around a snoring ball of yellow fur.  There’s a book in her hand and she is so enraptured by it that she doesn’t realize he is there until he steps forward from the shadows that fall around his room. 

“Oh!” she says, jumping a bit at his movement before settling back down on the bed.  “Hi.”

“Hi,” he says back.

The dog sprawled across the length of her bed lifts his head when Kylo speaks and she reaches down to draw a soothing hand across his fur. 

“Do you ever sleep?” she asks, her voice like wine—crisp and sweet.  

Kylo folds his arms across his chest.  “They say it’s for the weak.”

Rey’s lips tilt up in a smile that is nearly blinding.  “I agree.”

Silence falls then.  Not uncomfortable, just a peaceful kind of quiet that they both sink down into until she sets the book down beside her and asks, “How was your day?”

It’s such a normal question, so domestic in its simplicity that Kylo nearly laughs.  But she is looking at him with eyes that are kind and open and when he speaks, it is only to whisper the truth—or part of it, anyway.

“Terrible.  Yours?”

She shrugs.  “Boring.”

Kylo motions to the book beside her, an ancient thing with rumpled pages and a cover that is half torn.  “What are you reading?”

Rey follows his gaze and lifts the book, cradling it delicately to her chest.  A soft dusting of color has risen on her cheeks and for a ridiculous moment, Kylo is tempted to reach out and graze it with his fingertips, stealing her warmth for his own. 

“The Little Prince,” she answers softly.  “Have you read it?’

This time, Kylo searches his memories willingly.  He finds faded pictures of a boy with yellow hair who came from another planet and once loved a rose.  With it comes an echo of a low, gravelly voice—his father’s voice, from long ago.  The memory should be painful, but all he feels is tired and entranced by the soft light that shines around the girl, so unlike the harsh glow of florescence that filters down from the streetlights outside his window. 

“I think so.  A long time ago.  Is it any good?”

“It’s my favorite thing in the world,” she answers seriously and he can tell by the way she works her lip that she has surprised herself with her honesty.

Kylo’s limbs feel heavy and slow as he moves to sit on the edge of his bed.   

“You should sleep,” Rey whispers.   

Kylo shakes his head in a failed attempt to ease the cloudiness that has fallen over his body.  “It’s for the weak, remember?”

Rey smirks at this.  “I won’t tell anyone.”

He lets himself fall back then, turning onto his side until he finds her again across the room.  He watches her draw a blanket across her legs—pure white and softer than anything Kylo owns.  Then she picks up the book and begins to read, her voice low and gentle. 

“ _My life is very monotonous, the fox said_ ,” she begins.  “ _I hunt chickens, men hunt me.  All the chickens are just alike and all the men are just alike.  And, in consequence, I am a little bored.  But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life.  I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others.  Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground.  Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow.  And then look—you see the grain fields down yonder?  I do not eat bread.  Wheat is of no use to me.  The wheat fields have nothing to say to me.  And that is sad.  But you have hair that is the color of gold.  Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me!  The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you.  And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…_ ”

She continues on, for how long Kylo can’t be sure.  But it is with the whisper of Rey’s voice in his ears and the image of a golden fox in his mind that, finally, he sleeps. 


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The truth is I've written at least three versions of this chapter and I'm still not entirely happy with the way it turned out (#justvirgothings), but for my own sanity I think I just need to post it and move on to the next one. Thank you all for your patience and for your kind comments--they are so, so appreciated. <3

Maybe it should feel strange how often Ben appears to her now.  It happens in quiet moments before the sun has fully risen on her side of the sky, when the world is cast in a half light that colors everything it touches in a hazy mix of blue and grey.  It happens again when the heat of the day falls on the Outpost like a witch’s spell, pulling at the seconds on the clock until everything seems to move in slow motion. It happens when the moon appears to begin its arc through the sky and again under the glow of the Cantina’s buzzing neon sign just before she starts her shift at the bar.  

 

Maybe it should feel strange, how often she turns and finds him there beside her—like a shadow that’s risen from the ground to walk among the living.  But Rey has always been good at adapting. It’s how she survived the years in between—the ones after her parents left her behind and the ones before Plutt took her in.  She waited and she watched and she learned that often, it was best to stay quiet. To accept what was offered to her—frayed blankets on dirty floors, cold scraps and broken toys—with whispered sighs of gratitude.  She learned that other times, with other families, it was better to be loud—a bright girl with a dazzling smile, a doll with talents and tricks. She learned to be fast. She learned to be small. She learned to never take without asking and sometimes, with some families, to never ask at all.

 

It's the same now with Ben.  She watches him and she learns that he drinks his coffee hot and black and so frequently that she no longer wonders why he never seems to sleep.  She sees the way he closes his eyes and counts his breaths when he thinks no one is looking, the way his body tenses and his fists clench when he realizes someone is.  She knows that he rarely smiles and that when he does, it is quiet and gone in an instant, but blinding.

 

She feels him watching her too, in a way that makes her whole body feel warm.  Like she’s caught under the curve of a magnifying glass and if he tilts it just right she’ll burn up completely.  But Rey doesn’t mind the heat—she has lived her life in the eye of a desert sun.

 

There are other things too—small secrets whispered through the ether in moments when the bond opens and they find themselves alone.  That’s when Rey discovers some of her favorite things—like how he’ll walk for miles through the city just to avoid the stale air and harsh fluorescence of a subway car.  That he hates ice cream and loves old western films. That he broke his arm the same year she did—and the scar that runs the length of his forearm mirrors the one on her own from where the bone tore cleanly through the skin.

 

They carve out space for each other in these moments, sinking into the other’s world like they’ve been there all along.  There’s Ben at the end of the bar at the Cantina, pale hands folded neatly across the roughened wood. There’s Rey beside him on the street, marveling at the pulse of the crowd and the sprawl of the buildings, so tall she has to crane her neck to see where they disappear into the clouds above.  They stand together on the edge of a desert cliff, the layers of rock and sediment marking the millions of years that must have passed before the world came to be as it is now. They sit together on a bench in a park surrounded by stone and concrete to watch the leaves dance in the wind and Rey can hardly believe that there are places on earth that could be so green.

 

The connection hums between them even when it refuses to open fully and they feel every inch of the thousands of miles that exist between them.  Rey senses him in those moments, a quiet pressure on her mind that often flashes with anger—wild and untamed and violent in a way that would frighten her if she didn’t also feel the aching hurt that pulses just beneath it, if she didn’t see the quiet, desperate way he fights to control it when he’s with her.

 

And she knows that he must feel her too—it’s in the way his eyes roam over her flushed skin and rumpled clothes when the never-ending days that stretch into the night finally get the best of her and she nearly sleeps through the morning rush at the Outpost.  Her panic then is almost a tangible thing and she feels it mirrored back at her from his side of the bond. Later, when he appears by her stand, his eyes are frantic and his fists are clenched as he asks her if she’s okay. She nods her answer and offers a reassuring smile and though they are both a lie, she feels his worry recede like a tide, content for now to accept her at her word.  

 

There are times, when Ben isn’t there and everything grows quiet in his absence, when she considers sharing the existence of this new shared world with Finn, who is her friend and her brother and maybe the only person alive who wouldn’t think she was crazy for talking to a man only she can see.  Or perhaps with Rose, who is open and kind and welcome company for long shifts at the Cantina where they are often surrounded by brawling, drunken men. But then he comes back, appearing on the horizon like Peter Pan’s shadow and, in the end, she doesn’t say anything at all. She keeps him for herself.

 

\- - -

 

Time passes the same way it always does—in strange bursts that slip like sand through clasped hands and quiet lulls that drag until one day, Rey opens her eyes to find August is nearly gone, easily replaced by the promise of September.  She is just on the edge of consciousness, in the hazy space that exists only in the morning when the light is soft and the air is cool and if you close your eyes, you can slip through time and back into the comfort of a dream. She is tempted to do just that, to savor every moment of this rare slow morning, but the smell of fresh coffee fills the air around her, warm and intoxicating.  It tugs at her senses, spreading like wildfire through her veins until she is fully awake.

 

When she turns to her side, her head still cradled against the soft pillow underneath her, she is unsurprised to find Ben staring back at her.

 

“Good morning,” he says, tipping his mug of coffee in greeting.  He’s leaning against the crowded counter by the trailer’s tiny kitchen, bent slightly at the waist to avoid hitting his head against the ceiling—a lesson learned after more than a few near-concussions.

 

“’Morning,” Rey responds through a yawn.  “What time is it?”

 

He checks the watch on his wrist, a tiny smirk playing on his lips.  “For you or for me?”

 

Rey rolls her eyes good naturedly as she moves to lean against the side of the bed, stretching luxuriously in the process.  BB-8 huffs by her side, clearly annoyed by the disturbance.

 

“Me, please.”

 

“It’s 9:30,” he offers.  “No Outpost today?”

 

“Nope, it’s ‘closed for repairs,’” she says, quoting from the handwritten note that had been posted to the front gate the previous day.  “I’m a free woman.”

 

Ben raises his cup of coffee in the air.  “I’ll drink to that.”

 

“What about you?  Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

 

Though Rey has spent weeks popping in and out of New York, much of Ben’s life is still a mystery to her.  She’s seen him sometimes on the phone in the midst of heated conversations that he is quick to end when he feels the pull of the bond at his spine.  Other times, the connection has opened with him standing outside an old warehouse, the street around him quiet and nearly empty.

 

She could ask what it is that he does that affords him to live in such a sprawling apartment in the heart of New York City.  She could ask why sometimes he carries a gun, the harness around his shoulders just barely peeking through the bottom of his jacket.  But then he might ask her questions of his own. So instead they walk parallel with the line they’ve drawn in the sand, coming as close to the edge as they can without crossing it.

 

Ben shakes his head slightly.  “Not today. I’m a free man.”

 

She grins and then pauses for a second before attempting to untangle herself from the mess of sheets and blankets that twisted around her while she slept.  

 

“Can you turn around for a second?” she asks, fighting down the blush that threatens to rise as her bare legs come out from under the heap.  

 

“O-oh,” Ben stammers, the tips of his ears glowing red from where they just barely peek out from underneath his hair.  “Yeah. Of course.”

 

Rey waits until his back is fully turned before rising up from the bed to grab her bathing suit, the closest pair of jean shorts she can find, and a decently clean t-shirt to exchange for the ratty tank top she wore to bed.  

 

She pulls on each item of clothing as quickly as she can, stifling a laugh when her discarded tank top falls across BB-8’s eyes.  She turns when she’s finished and finds Ben standing stock still, his back turned studiously away from her. He is almost comically large compared to the size of everything else in the trailer and Rey laughs again.  

 

Then she clears her throat, signaling to him that it’s safe to turn around.  When he does, she meets his gaze with crossed arms and a raised eyebrow. “Want to see something cool?”

 

\- - -

 

It will be several weeks yet before the New Mexican desert catches up with the season and the first crisp winds blow in to mark the beginning of the fall, but there’s something in the air that feels like change when Ben and Rey step from the trailer and out into the day.  It’s something dark and electric--a feeling that clings to the skin and raises the hair on the back of your neck and though there is not yet a cloud in the sky, Rey knows that rain is coming.

 

“Come on,” she calls to Ben, beckoning for him to follow her down one of the many trails that wind through the Outpost.  He does without hesitation, quickly falling into place beside her, their footsteps kicking up clouds of dirt that drift back down to the ground like fairy dust.

 

“Where are we going?” Ben asks, his voice low and cautious.

 

“You’ll see,” Rey responds, pushing on through the growing heat at an even quicker pace that leaves Ben stumbling to catch up.  

 

There’s a thin sheen of sweat across Rey’s skin when the path finally opens onto a fresh water spring surrounded by rocks and small shrubs.  The water is a clear cerulean blue that offers a perfect reflection of the sky above and the few dark clouds that have formed since they left the trailer behind.

 

Rey runs the last few steps of the trail before coming to a stop on the edge of the spring,  the rough rock warm under her now bare feet.

 

Ben isn’t far behind and when he comes to stand next to her on the edge, he is so close that his arm nearly skates her own, causing a shiver to run down her spine.  She’s tempted to lean in, to close the distance, to see if she would feel him as a solid form under her own skin. But it’s another line they haven’t crossed and so instead she steps away, just far enough to keen her neck to see his face in full view.  

 

He is almost smiling as he looks down into the water, so clear you can see straight to the bottom, and when he turns to her, there is a glimmer in his eyes that Rey has never seen before.  It makes him seem years younger than he is and Rey wonders briefly what he might have been like as a child.

 

“What do you think will happen if I try to jump into that water?” he asks, his dark eyes wide and curious.  

 

Rey offers a devilish smile in return.  “There’s only one way to find out.”

 

The next thing Rey knows, Ben is stripping off his shirt and his pants and she nearly rolls her eyes at how ridiculously huge he is, the muscles in his back rippling as he rears back to leap into the water below.

 

He is suspended for a moment in the air and Rey holds her breath as if she’s the one falling.  There’s still so much she doesn’t understand about the bond and it hurts her head to try to think about how Ben can somehow be here with her in the desert and at home in New York.  But then he slips through the water, as solid and as real as the rock beneath her feet and she stops trying to understand the physics of it because really, what does it matter? The truth is that he’s there and she’s there and Rey has long since accepted that there are some things in life that can’t be explained or controlled.  Maybe Ben is one of them.

 

“Are you coming or not?” Ben calls from below, long arms spread wide as he works to stay afloat.  

 

Rey breathes then, long and deep, before jumping from the edge to meet Ben at his side.

 

\- - -

 

They swim for hours--until their limbs are exhausted and their teeth are chattering and they pull themselves from the water to bask on the rocks like a pair of snakes, leeching the warmth from the sun until the blood warms in their veins.  Their chests rise and fall in perfect rhythm, joining the whisper of the water and the brush of the shrubs against the rocks below to form a gentle melody that makes them both feel drowsy and slow.

 

Clouds are beginning to roll in and Rey watches them through shielded eyes, looking for hidden messages in the lazy swirl of white and grey.  When she doesn’t find any, she turns instead to watch the slow drip of the water still beaded across Ben’s skin, drawing courage from the way his eyes are closed tight against the sun.

 

“Do you think it’s always been there?” he asks suddenly, making her jump.

 

Rey swallows down her nerves and turns her head to better see his face.  “What do you mean?”

 

“The connection or whatever it is.  Do you think it’s always been there and we just didn’t know it?”

 

Rey thinks of the dreams and the voice that whispered softly in her ear and all of the times that she should have felt alone and afraid, but instead she felt the echo of another soul--a shadow that told her she _wasn’t_ alone, not really anway.

 

“Maybe,” she whispers in answer.  

 

He sits up then, leaning over her so that the sun disappears and she is cast in shadow.  Water drips down from his hair and falls across her chest and Rey’s nipples harden against the fabric of her bathing suit.  She feels hot and cold and frozen to the ground as Ben towers over her, his dark eyes locked onto hers in a way that makes her soul ache.  

 

Time stretches on and they both feel the pull of the connection as the edges of the bond start to fade away and they both know that they will soon be stolen away from each other.  But before they are, Ben leans closer, cradling his lips against her ear to whisper another secret. “I think I’ve always known you, Rey.”

 

She closes her eyes against his words, savoring the feeling of his breath on her cheek and the warmth that radiates from his skin to hers.  When she opens them again, he is gone.

 

In the quiet that falls on the world in his absence, Rey thinks that maybe in another life, she would have more days like today.  Days where she doesn’t wake when the rest of the world is still asleep. Days where she doesn’t rush from one job to the next with hardly time to breathe in between.  Days that she spends with someone at her side.

 

She allows herself to picture it for the span of a single second before giving it back to the desert sun.  Then she breathes in her gratitude for the heat, for the promise of rain, for Ben and the few precious hours she’s been given with him.

 

And as the first peel of thunder roars from the canyons in the distance, she pretends it’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The spring in this chapter is based on a real place called the [Blue Hole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Hole_\(New_Mexico\)) (creative, eh?) in Santa Rose, NM. It is totally gorgeous and the water is freezing all year round.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My life is a mess and I'm terrible at timely updates, but please enjoy this extra long chapter as a thanks for sticking with me and this story. I love you all!

When Kylo was small--when he still had a family and he was still Ben--he would wait for the days in winter when the sky would turn grey and the word would turn white.  He would watch the snow fall from the heavens in gusts of spiraling circles, erasing the dirt and the concrete as it settled to the ground, leaving the earth beneath it clean and new and quiet. 

His mother would stay home those days--and his father too, the roads too slick and the snow too deep to risk going out.  They would lock themselves away in the warmth of the house and settle on the couch to eat popcorn and watch western films--old ones with music that crackled and desert landscapes painted in shades of staticky grey.  Han would mouth along with the taunts of his favorite gunslingers and Leia would laugh, high and bright. Ben would watch it all with eyes that were not yet afraid and not yet angry and he would think that maybe, in another life, his dad was an outlaw instead of a pilot and they would ride through the desert canyons as father and son, the sun on their backs and pistols strapped to their sides.

Later, when the cold found its way in through the cracks in the house, they would hunker down in front of the fire and Ben would sit as close to the flame as he possibly could--and as close as Leia would allow.  He would watch the embers glow and dance with Chewie by his side, until his eyes grew heavy and his skin turned pink from the flame and Han would pull him away with promises he never quite could keep--that there would be more snow and more fires, that this time would come again, and they would all be there for it when it did.

That’s what it feels like now with Rey, every time the bond opens and the earth shifts to make space for her by Kylo’s side.  Like a thousand days of snow, a perpetually burning fire, an endless world of white. 

It’s all he can do not to touch her in those moments, to reach across the last few inches that exist between them to feel her skin against his.  He’s memorized it by now, the freckled slope of her shoulder, the golden length of her legs, the back of her neck when her hair is piled high on top of her head.  He wants to feel it all, to run his hands over every square inch until he’s sure that she’s real, that this isn’t some strange delusion, or else some cruel punishment for falling in line with Snoke, for giving into the darkness that runs like mud through his veins.

But he sees the way she is careful to leave space between them, the way her eyes widen and her spine freezes when he comes too close.  It happened on the edge of the spring, when she was wet and panting beneath him, in the last few seconds before the bond shuddered closed.  It happens again when he opens his eyes and finds himself cramped insider her tiny trailer, a hair’s breadth from the side of her bed. 

It's all he can do not to cross the world then, when her skin is warm and flushed from the coming heat, when she smiles before she’s even opened her eyes, when he’s so close he can see the pulse of blood in her throat, slow and steady and strong. 

But he never does.  Instead, he focuses on the things he’s allowed to have from her, the things he’s allowed to keep—like how her hands are nearly always stained a faint ruddy brown from the dirt she prefers to sift through with bare fingers as she transfers seeds to soil and pots to plants.  That she seems to live on a steady diet of strawberry pop-tarts and stale fries leftover from the bar. That she can walk the trails that wind through the Outpost with only the light from the moon to guide her way, unafraid of the creatures that linger in the darkness just beside her. 

He collects every detail like a stone from the shore.  He thinks of the snow and the warmth of the fire and he waits for the promise of tomorrow.

\- - -

He’s in the middle of one those moments now--a slow, lazy one in September where the sun blazes in the sky overhead and the crowd from the Outpost slows to a trickle of weary travelers, their skin damp and reddened from the late summer heat.  Kylo stands at the back of Rey’s stall, a phantom dressed in black, content to watch as she winds through the rows with a little girl by her side. 

They’ve been at it for nearly an hour--a desperate search for the perfect treasure for the girl to take with her on her travels, their palms cupped loosely together and their brows furrowed in mirrored determination. 

“What do you think of this one?” Kylo hears Rey ask, unwaveringly patient and kind as she bends down on one knee to pluck an aloe plant from a bottom shelf.  It’s a delicate little thing with sharp edges, its color somewhere between burnt orange and coppery red--like the city sky at sunset.

The girl considers it, the tip of her tongue poking out between gapped teeth.  Then she smiles, soft and sweet, nodding her approval. “That’s the one,” she whispers. 

“I think you’re right,” Rey whispers back through a smile that crinkles the bridge of her nose. 

Kylo is struck then by how much he wants to stay in this world with Rey, to help her pack what’s left of her inventory back in the trunk of her car, to go with her as she rushes home to exchange her dirt stained clothes for the black shorts and white shirt she wears to the Cantina, to watch as she swipes a bit of mascara through her lashes and gathers her hair in a bun at the base of her neck. 

He would do anything to stay just a bit longer, to stay forever if he could.  But the earth’s energy begins to shift around him and he barely has time to catch her eyes and wave goodbye before he falls through the edges of her desert and breaks through the surface of the world he left behind.

\- - -

The sun has long since set in New York, leaving his apartment shadowed and cold and endlessly empty compared to the slow, steady hum of noise that echoed through the Outpost just moments before.  It’s disorienting—the sudden shift from light to dark, from slow dry heat to gusts of recycled air—and he sways a bit on his feet before his body adjusts to the change. Then he realizes, in a blaze of sharp panic, what the darkness means—that the earth continued its evolution around the sun, even when he was half a world away from his life in the city, that time continued to pass, and that he is now dangerously late for receiving a shipment of guns with Poe.

He runs then, hard and fast, feet pounding against the pavement in measured steps that teeter just on the edge of control until an old warehouse appears on the horizon, the street surrounding it dark and empty save for a single First Order van parked outside. 

Kylo enters through the rusted metal gate, panting and sweating, and finds Poe leaning against the back wall, a half burnt cigarette held between his lips. 

“You’re late.”

Poe’s voice echoes off the walls—stripped to the studs and covered with layers of old graffiti.  His face, cast in half shadow, is split in a wide grin that Kylo chooses to ignore.

“You’re never late,” Poe continues, tone taunting and eyes wide in mock amazement as he takes another drag of his cigarette.

Kylo ignores this too, taking a moment to instead lock his hands behind his head as he pushes past the tight feeling in his chest and forces air into his lungs in careful, measured gasps. 

And what can he say?  That he’s late because he couldn’t take his eyes off a pretty girl in New Mexico?  That the sun still blazed in the sky there as it set in New York and he forgot for a moment that he’s supposed to exist somewhere else, in a life where he is only Kylo Ren and Ben Solo is nothing more than a shadow of a foolish boy that he left behind?

No, he can’t say that.  So instead he lies, the words sounding false even to his own ears as they fill the dark, empty space around him. 

“Whatever.  I had some shit to do.”

“Uh huh,” Poe answers, taking another slow drag of his cigarette.  “You think Snoke would buy that?”

The panic that comes then is fast and cruel and so overwhelming it must slip through the cracks in his walls because Poe instantly raises his hands in surrender. 

“Just fucking around, man.  You know I’m not a snitch.” He drops what’s left of the cigarette down to the dirty concrete floor and stubs it out with the toe of his boot. 

Kylo sucks in another breath, slow and even, willing his pulse to slow. 

“And anyway,” Poe continues.  “We’ve got bigger problems than your sudden lack of punctuality.”

Kylo raises an eyebrow in question, prompting Poe to gesture widely around the empty room. 

“The suppliers didn’t show.”

“Shit,” Kylo curses under his breath as he takes in Poe’s words.  “Maybe they’re just running late?”

“Right,” Poe laughs.  “I’m sure that’s it.” 

Kylo knows Poe is right.  The First Order deals only with seasoned suppliers—old reliable establishments that run up and down the Iron Pipeline in systematic rotations—they bring the guns in and Snoke distributes them throughout the city.  It’s a carefully oiled machine that offers little room for error. If the suppliers are late, it can only mean one of two things—they were intercepted before they made it to the drop point, or they’re selling to someone else.   Either way, it’s bad news for the Order and even worse news for Kylo, who will likely be in charge of passing the message along to Snoke.

The weight of it all comes crashing down on him and in the dim of the warehouse, it suddenly feels like too much to bear.  He falls back against the wall and slides down to the floor, his long legs drawn up towards his chest. 

It’s probably a mistake, maybe even a fatal error to allow Poe to see him like this, but he can’t bring himself to care.  There’s only silence for a moment, and then Kylo hears the echo of Poe’s footsteps as he crosses the room and drops with a thud to Kylo’s side. 

“This isn’t on you, man,” Poe says into the darkness.

Kylo offers a noncommittal humph in response.  Because maybe Poe is right. Maybe this can all be chalked up to bad luck or bad timing.  Maybe it’s nothing more than a slow shifting of loyalties, a natural progression in the world of crime, an inevitability. 

Or maybe it isn’t. 

Maybe Kylo missed something, a clue or a sign that this was coming.  Maybe it passed him by, when he was warm in the desert with Rey. Maybe he stopped being careful.  Maybe he stopped looking. 

He runs his hands through his hair and turns to look at Poe.  “What am I going to do?” he asks.

Poe smiles in that charming way that only he can manage as he claps Kylo roughly on the shoulder.

“We’re gonna go have a drink,” he says, offering his hand to help pull Kylo to his feet.  “And you can deal with Snoke in the morning.”

\- - -

It’s much later when Kylo stumbles into his apartment, unbalanced and glassy eyed from the whiskey he shared with Poe at the bar down the street.  His limbs feel heavy and his mind feels slow as he fills a glass with water from the tap and downs it all in one go, leaning on the edge of the counter to steady his feet on the ground. 

He should go to bed, the time glowing from the clock above the stove nearly late enough to qualify as early, but the drunken, weaker part of him hopes that the connection will open and he'll see Rey one more time before the start of a new day.  He had looked for her all night and when the light from a passing car illuminates the dark kitchen, Kylo thinks for a second that she is there. But then the car passes on, draining the light from the room until it feels somehow darker than it was just moments before. 

He sighs and walks to the living room where he falls in a heap against the darkened leather couch.  Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe it’s better for him not to get lost in her when so much is at stake in his life in the city.

He’s caught somewhere between sleep and consciousness when his phone begins to buzz on the couch beside him.  He answers on the first ring, bracing himself for the sound of Snoke’s gravelly voice on the other end of the line demanding to know why the suppliers hadn’t shown up, why Kylo hadn’t called him immediately, and what was he going to do now that their inventory is dangerously depleted. 

But when the line connects, he hears something else.  Something that steals the breath from his lungs. 

He hears the voice of Leia Organa. 

Suddenly he is five and sick in bed with the flu, his little body flushed and sweating under a mountain of blankets as his teeth chatter loudly in the quiet stretch of time that exists before dawn.  Leia whispers soothing words against his ear, stories where he is a prince in a world among the stars and all things are good and just.

He’s twelve and panicked, the blood in his veins turned to shards of iron that tear at his skin.  And he isn’t even sure what he’s afraid of, he only knows that he’s too old for nightmares and too old for his mother to hold him, but she’s there anyway reminding him how to breathe.

He’s seventeen and untouchable in his fury as his mother stands stone faced and fierce on the other side of a line she’s drawn in the sand.  She is resolute as she tells him that they can’t help him anymore, that he has to go away, to live half a world away with an uncle he barely knows. 

It’s the last time they speak, the last time he hears her voice until this moment—as a man of 32 who goes by a different name. 

“Hello, Ben.”

She says it like he’s just come home from school, like there isn’t any danger in it, like it isn’t the most dangerous thing in the world for him to be talking to her. 

But then maybe she senses his fear in the way she always seemed to know what he was thinking when he was little because she adds, “Don’t worry.  This is a secure line. We’re not tracing you and there’s no way to trace it back to me either.”

He says nothing.  He barely breathes as the seconds tick by and he knows he should hang up, even if she’s telling the truth, but he can’t seem to move. 

“This isn’t exactly standard protocol,” she starts, “to make such direct contact with a top member of the organization I’m in charge of investigating.  But I think you’d agree that there isn’t much to this situation that’s standard.”

She chuckles, the sound low and soft in his ears, but harsher than he remembers it and it seems to shake him from his reverie because suddenly his own voice is in his ears, too loud against the quiet of the room.

“What is it that you want from me?” 

It’s a challenge that she easily deflects with a question of her own.

“Did you know that nearly half the murders in New York City are committed with guns we suspect can be traced back to the First Order?”

Again, he says nothing.

“So many lives, Ben,” she says it like a sigh.  Quiet and resigned—the same way she sounded all those years ago when she tried to send him away.  “I won’t allow any more.”

“He’s more powerful than you think,” Kylo replies, his voice harsh and jagged.    

“Snoke is only as powerful as people believe him to be.  But no one is untouchable, Ben. My father wasn’t. Victor Snoke is no different.”

Kylo knows what she says isn’t a lie.  That most crime lords eventually crumble under their mountain of corruption.  That even Anakin Skywalker, his grandfather and one of the most prestigious kingpins in the history of New York City, had lost everything in the pursuit of his crimes, that he paid for them with his death. 

“Let me help you,” she whispers, sounding suddenly so much older than before. 

He wonders, in the silence that stretches between them, what she looks like now.  Does she still wear her hair long, tied up in a bun at the base of her neck? Has it gone grey in the years that have passed since they last saw each other?  And when the answers don’t come, he tries to paint an image of the future she is offering—one without Snoke and without the First Order. 

The only thing he sees is Rey, golden and strong in his hands, and it’s enough to make him want to tell Leia anything she wants to hear, anything to bring the First Order down. 

But then he remembers Canady’s blood—how it shone bright on his hands the day Rey came into his life.  How it dripped like ink across the floor, marking him forever as a man who follows orders, even when he shouldn’t, even when they’re terrible.  And he realizes with certainty now what a part of him has always known. That some mistakes can’t be fixed. That some people can’t be saved. 

When he speaks, his voice is thick and his words are resigned.  “It’s too late.” 

The words hang in the ether for a fragment of time that seems to exist in a separate plane of reality.  One where he swears he feels the way they tear at his mother’s heart, ripping open old scars that never quite healed the way they should have after all this time.  He hears her breathe the way she taught him to when things are so hard that it seems impossible that the world should keep turning—in through the nose, out through the mouth.  He matches the beat of his heart to hers in that other reality in the hopes that maybe, somewhere, this story has a different ending. Then he disconnects the line, leaving only silence in its wake.  

Kylo hurls the phone against the wall, reveling in the way it chips away at the paint before falling in pieces to the ground.  But it’s not enough to stem the flood of rage and hurt that roars in his veins, so he reaches for the table by his feet, easily upending it with a thrust of his arm.  The glass top shatters as it falls, littering the floor with a thousand tiny shards that glitter and dance in what little light filters in through the window from the street below. 

He’s moving for a stack of old records when he turns and finds Rey, wide eyed and pale in the moonlight and for a moment he doesn’t believe she’s really there.  But then she calls his name, soft and firm, and he finds himself frozen again.

She looks a bit like she did the first time he saw her—cautious, unsure, afraid.  But she doesn’t close her eyes and she doesn’t turn away. Instead, she walks toward him, through the glass and the chaos until he can see her up close. 

“You’re bleeding,” she says, her eyes drawn toward his hands, still balled into tight fists by his side.

He fights to unclench them as he lifts them up toward the light and he finds that she’s right—his hands and wrists are covered in abrasions that drip sticky, dark blood down his arms and onto the floor beneath them.

“The glass,” he manages to say, gesturing toward the shattered table in the middle of the room.

Rey only nods, like it makes perfect sense, like it’s all the explanation she needs. 

Then, just like that, she’s touching him—so lightly it almost doesn’t feel real, but her skin is warm against his and he feels the scrape of her calloused fingers as they dance across his arm, skating through the blood to reach the cuts underneath. 

She pulls him closer, lifting first one arm and then the other up to the light to better see the damage. 

“I don’t think you need stitches,” she says, brow furrowed in concentration.  “But we need to clean these cuts.” 

All he can do is nod as she pulls him to the kitchen and drags a damp cloth across his arms, stopping every now and then to wring the bloody water out in the sink. 

“Does it hurt?” she asks as she moves over a particularly deep gouge on his palm. 

“No,” he answers truthfully.  And maybe it should, but all he can feel is the gentle scrape of her skin on his.   

“Do you want to talk about it?” she says after a while, when the blood is nearly gone and she’s working to wind a bandage over the worst of the wounds.

“I just,” he starts, unsure of what to say.  “I talked to my mom for the first time in a really long time tonight.”

She nods, fingers still winding the bandage around his hand.  “Family is hard.”

“Yes,” he agrees. 

She secures the bandage with a final piece of medical tape and flexes his hand to make sure it stays in place.  “This should do until morning, but you’ll need to change those bandages a couple times a day.” 

He nods, his face serious.  “I will.”

They’re huddled in the corner of his kitchen, Rey at the sink and Kylo with his back pressed against the counter beside her.  Up close like this, he can see how her chest is flushed a soft rosy color, the result of too much time spent out in the sun. And her eyes, which he always thought were green, are flecked with specks of brown not unlike his own, making them look much darker in the shadowed light that filters through his apartment. 

Rey stares up at him, lips pursed in concern, and before he can stop himself, he’s reaching for her hand.  She doesn’t pull away when his fingers wrap around hers. She doesn’t move when he steps just a bit closer, closing what little distance there was left between them.  And when he dips his head to press his lips against the palm of her open hand, she lets him. 

It’s quick, fleeting, her skin soft and sweet against his mouth.  It leaves him desperate for more, but the soft smile he finds on Rey’s face soothes the burn just enough so he can stand it. 

“Come on,” she says softly.  “I’ll help you clean up.”

Kylo nods and they walk back toward the living room as one, hands brushing as they step toward the glass still strewn across the hardwood floor. 

In the pale light of early dawn, it almost looks like snow. 

\- - -

Later that night, when Rey is safe and warm in her bed with a ghost of a kiss still tingling her palm, she dreams of a man in a mask.  It’s black and mechanical and when he speaks, his voice is low and harsh, distorted by the shield of matte metal that keeps his face hidden.  He raises a spitting sword of crimson light to her throat and though she should be terrified, something tells her that she’s safe, that this stalking creature dressed in black won’t harm her.  

He speaks again, something about a droid and a map that she doesn’t understand, and though it is a different voice than the one she’s often heard in dreams, there’s something familiar about the cadence, deep and carefully controlled. 

In the moment just before he disappears into the shadows, she thinks that maybe the voice is Ben’s.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have contact, y'all!! This chapter turned out SO different than what I had originally planned, but I'm rolling with it. Thank you as always for reading!! <3

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at [juniordreamer](http://juniordreamer.tumblr.com) where I post Reylo gif sets and bad memes. Come say hello!


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